Itemization in WoW Classic - Items To Use 1.12 Versions

Blizzard has shared more details on itemization in WoW Classic. While items changed throughout vanilla WoW, with different stats, bugs, and appearances, WoW Classic will only include that last version of the item: 1.12.

While WoW Classic will be split up into six content phases, unlocking loot and content progressively, Blizzard will not be implementing a system of "progressive itemization," meaning that the stats on items will not change each patch.

Learn more about all the returning systems in Classic WoW. as well as the progressive content schedule, in our Classic WoW Overview!

Further Clarifications

Following the post, WatcherDev provided more info about items that were added later to the loot tables:

I'd expect 1.4 additions would be Phase 2; 1.5 additions would be Phase 3. In general, Phase 2 is 1.3-1.4, Phase 3 is 1.5-1.6, Phase 4 is 1.7-1.8, etc. There may be some exceptions I'm failing to recall, but that's the general structure.

Blizzard

It’s been a lot of fun over the last couple of months to dive into the development of WoW Classic with the team, while trying to answer some of the many questions that have been posed here and elsewhere. Looking at the plans for a phased content release, unlocking dungeons and raids, and unlocking other systems, it’s clear that the aim is to create a progression experience that resembles the original arc from when WoW first launched. In thinking about what belongs in each of those phases, the team’s focus has always been on rewards.

Developers have scoured through vendor lists and treasure tables for items that were added in patches, and then attached them to the staged content unlock plan. This means that if a new item was originally added to a dungeon boss’s loot table with Ahn’Qiraj, you shouldn’t expect it to appear in WoW Classic until Phase 5, which is the phase that contains Ahn’Qiraj content.

Along the way, we’ve seen many questions asking if we’re also retracing the steps of incremental changes to individual items and their stats that may have occurred throughout original WoW. Such a plan could be called “progressive itemization.”

Here’s an example of progressive itemization. The Tier 2 warrior Helm of Wrath originally had Spirit and Agility on it, as well as critical strike chance. In Patch 1.5.0, the helm’s stat budget was changed to Stamina, Strength, and Defense, along with elemental resistances. Then in Patch 1.7.0, the amount of Defense on the helm was reduced. In Patch 1.8.0, the 5-piece set bonus that included the helm was fixed to work with Whirlwind, and in 1.9.0, it got a better look with an art update.

WoW Classic will only include that last version of the item, as it existed in our reference version: 1.12.

Of course, this raises the question “why?”. Why differentiate between adding new items along the way and making modifications to existing items?

When new items are added to loot tables, you’re generally seeing a deliberate effort to provide catch-up gear and/or to provide new goals for players who had exhausted an existing reward structure. For example, in original WoW, items were added to give players a way to quickly prepare for Ahn’Qiraj without having to spend months in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair.

The changing of existing items in patches often illustrated the original design team responding to how players played the game. Their primary goal at the time was to make rewards more relevant and exciting. Developers realizing that Spirit probably wasn’t an ideal stat for a warrior raid set helm* was an example of this sort of change.

Many class abilities and talents evolved similarly. For example, going into Patch 1.8.0, the game designers determined that Moonkin Form would be a more compelling 31-point Balance druid talent than the original selection of Hurricane.

It’s important to remember that there’s more to WoW Classic than a long series of changes. Even if each item change could be made, and even if every class change could be progressively recreated, that would still only constitute a piece of the overall landscape of original WoW. We remember how early raid progression was punctuated by unexpected roadblocks and workarounds:

As far as we know, every one of the first Ragnaros kills was only possible due to a bug that made Lava Burst temporarily stop firing after a wipe.

Chromaggus was practically unbeatable due to Ignite Flesh unavoidably and lethally stacking on tanks, until it was discovered that Flamegor’s ramp in the laboratory allowed the entire raid to damage Chromaggus without being exposed to his breath attacks.

C’Thun was infamously seen as unkillable until a hotfix in April 2006 prevented additional tentacles from spawning while he was vulnerable.

Recreating, and then re-fixing every major progression-affecting bug wouldn’t account for what we think matters much more: the people playing the game. There were many unknowns in original WoW. The first guilds to reach Nefarian spent their initial pulls testing different ideas they had and trying to figure out what condition would get them past the first part of the fight (defeating 40 drakonids). That experience can’t be recreated, because the knowledge can’t be unlearned. For a long time after Patch 1.4.0 came out, many players simply had no idea how good Obsidian Edged Blade or Aged Core Leather Gloves were. The power of weapon skill will be no surprise in WoW Classic.

So rather than try to recreate a specific experience from 2005 that can never fully be recaptured, our aim has been to accurately and fully restore the original game’s mechanics and stats to their final and most polished state from before The Burning Crusade. That mission has been a pillar of WoW Classic’s design from its inception.

This means that while content will be unlocked progressively to allow for each raid tier to shine, systems such as class design, battleground mechanics, and stats on existing items will all be set to their final 1.12 conditions. That should take the pressure off players to be constantly figuring out what we might do next to remain exactly in line with how the game once played out, and we can all focus a little more on community building and enjoying the experience together.

Commenti

Commento di Calcitrant

on 2019-04-26T11:13:36-05:00

thats fine because so many items were near-useless on release (looking at warlock tier 1 and 2). aq patch added more spellpower, especially to tier 2 shoulders which had pathetic amounts and werent worth wearing

it would be truly awful to end up wearing spellpower greens until deep aq. again

Commento di Ragorism

on 2019-04-26T11:14:29-05:00

While people may disagree with their decision, their reasoning is perfectly sound. I'm also glad that this development team is able to communicate externally so clearly and effectively, it's very refreshing compared to the other development teams at Blizzard.

Commento di Lostelf

on 2019-04-26T11:22:53-05:00

Good imo.

Many of those stats were allocated to those items due to Blizzard still learning the ropes. Going ahead to the most polished versions is going to be better for most folks I reckon.

Commento di 3urarum

on 2019-04-26T11:32:42-05:00

Yep thanks for the update. I think it's perfectly reasonable to do it this way given the circumstances that this is in fact somewhat different from vanilla. Ppl already know lots of stuff that can't be undone blizzard argumentation here is perfectly valid.

Commento di Geistmeister

on 2019-04-26T11:34:16-05:00

AWESOME Job team!

Commento di Xoros

on 2019-04-26T11:41:12-05:00

Excellent!

Well-said. Thank you.

Commento di Cielos

on 2019-04-26T12:18:34-05:00

I'm glad they did this. It wouldn't make sense to release something like C'thun in its unkillable state, as no one would attempt it until the hotfix.

Commento di Uchur

on 2019-04-26T12:26:54-05:00

That's a nice decision!

Commento di Muffpotter

on 2019-04-26T12:35:39-05:00

sounds good. makes sense.

Commento di Raevynwillow512

on 2019-04-26T13:18:42-05:00

If anyone listens to the podcast "countdown to classic" (if you dont, you should 100% check it out..its amazing) this is the exact topic that came up in their latest show. The topic was about how the announcement of the Employee only alpha testing they are doing and there are clever people who apparently have used the private server trickery to build a version of bfa 8.0 and splice the Alpha from the CDN, and make it work as a sort of sandbox environment for the alpha.

So basically they can play the alpha client side, but anything server related obviously is not there (instances, or anything that requires server data) but you can run around and see the current version of the alpha etc.

This has led to many leaked screenshots online of people showing what the stats and items are looking like on said alpha, and it was said that one of the first things that was a big deal was that the items were all 1.12 versions that had all the latest stats etc. So I love this news post and them giving us a heads up, but this knowledge is already been out there for maybe a few days now to a few weeks, as again, there are some very clever/smart people out there who have been mining and even playing the alpha (and i'm not saying its a good/bad, i'm neutral and its going to happen)

So that is awesome news for a number of reasons. Can you imagine having to go back through and re-editing every item that got changed every phase if they were to try to re-create those items so that they changed over time. That is a lot of needless work, for no real gain other than authenticity. Imagine getting into phase 1, and getting some of those items from early wow and then knowing hey this item will get a buff in x phase later.

That doesn't sound fun at all. Worse yet, if you dont follow the game or private server communities, and didn't even know certain items were only powerful during x phase or that they were different than final patch 1.12, it just is a bad experience for everyone. Personally I would of hated having to track down items and try to plan out when and where to get the "good" versions and having to wait for said updates..and what if they put wrong stats, or human error mistakes as they put them in, only to be changed in x months anyways to final 1.12 numbers...no thanks.

Yes this means players will have much more powerful gear from the start, this means itemization will be much better overall from the start, which is a good thing. Main benefit is the factor of time. Most people who express love for classic on forums and podcasts and the communities are all-in for this game but 95% of them fear that the main thing holding them back will be time. 14 years ago, I was in college living at home, I could sink 10+ hours a day into vanilla wow and not even bat an eye. Flash forward to now with kids and family and just so many other factors (burn out of the game after 15 years as well) and you have people really just hoping for anything and everything to kind of speed things along, with still holding true the experience.

So we will see faster world kills, easier farming, multitude of things due to this item change, BUT that is far better than the massive time sink that was vanilla wow. Not saying that we want it be fast like retail, but this will definitely take some of the grind burden or progression burden out of the equation, and allow us to keep a faster pace overall, which again for most is much appreciated at the end of the day. This also increases overall viability of specs and classes overall, which in vanilla was a sore spot for many, and bring the bottom specs up slightly, enough for a better experience.

TLDR; awesome change from wasting precious dev time, and making a much smoother experience, time and progression wise.

Commento di Zaijal

on 2019-04-26T13:27:32-05:00

I am all for this - their points about being unable to recreate the experience of re-learning mechanics and workarounds is perfectly valid, and I think we will all appreciate a fairly bug-free and polished experience.

Commento di agrapur

on 2019-04-26T13:31:58-05:00

This "vanilla" thing... I started at TBC and yet I feel a newb.

Commento di Momoi

on 2019-04-26T13:56:04-05:00

Well done now i am really interested to try again classic

Commento di izaul

on 2019-04-26T14:05:53-05:00

But warrior spirit really changed things it was amazing that HP regen I need more of it. I was unkillable

Commento di Nihlo

Commento di ikechi

Are you giving an authentic Blizzard-quality, or Nostalrius-quality Classic experience?

WTF, at least use some thottbot archives

The problem is, the post polished content was on patch 3.0.9 .........

Commento di hotaru251

on 2019-04-26T15:09:35-05:00

thats fine because so many items were near-useless on release (looking at warlock tier 1 and 2). aq patch added more spellpower, especially to tier 2 shoulders which had pathetic amounts and werent worth wearing

it would be truly awful to end up wearing spellpower greens until deep aq. again

but we looked glorious v_v

Commento di EmberPal90

on 2019-04-26T15:26:31-05:00

I am pleased most too see there is lots of people that see this as a possetive news and not just a negative crusade.classic hype!

Commento di pixaloop

on 2019-04-26T15:37:01-05:00

Please keep spirit on my tank gear.

-vanilla tank

Commento di Zigrifid

on 2019-04-26T15:50:08-05:00

so the "Fang of Venexus" is making a proper return along side his big brother "Nexusstrike"